Monday, 15 July 2013

Further to my post about the documentary 'Queen Victoria's Children' , during the research for my forthcoming biography of Princess Alice, Grand
Duchess of Hesse, I am frequently left in amazement at the myth of Queen
Victoria being an uncaring mother, or one who was so self-obsessed and absorbed
in her husband that her children were either neglected or bullied! Over and over
again, her letters and diary entries are filled with references to her
children – her concern for them, her love for them, how she misses them when
they are absent, their little foibles and all the funny things that children do!

Prince Leopold is often cited as an example of neglect. His illness
(haemophilia) often meant that he was left behind when the rest of the family
carried out their regular migrations between Osborne, Windsor, Buckingham Palace
and Balmoral – but, far from glad that he was absent (‘out of sight, out of
mind’) the Queen worried about him and missed him. When, for example, towards
the end of his life, Prince Albert insisted on returning to London from Osborne
in order to carry out an engagement, Queen Victoria was aghast at having to
leave’ poor little Leopold on his sickbed.’ When Leopold was sent to France to
avoid the damp English winter, Queen Victoria described kitting him out in a new
little suit and kissing him goodbye. A little later, she described running up
and downstairs all day, tending her children who had measles. When Vicky was ill
in Prussia, Queen Victoria was so appalled that she was being treated by leeches
that she wanted to send her own specialist to offer alternative treatment. I
could cite a thousand more examples of her concern for her children, and the way
in which she refused to force any of them into a loveless marriage...I
could also quote many examples of foreign royalties being deeply touched by the
affection shown to the royal children by their loving parents!

I sincerely hope my forthcoming biography will lead to a reappraisal of the
totally unjust accusation about her lack of maternal feeling!

Tuesday, 2 July 2013

I am delighted to present an interview with Helen Azar, librarian, translator and author of The Diary of Olga Romanov, Royal Witness to the Russian Revolution, which will be released this autumn. Based on more than five years research, the book includes not only the original diary of the Tsar's eldest daughter, but also letters and memoirs of the Grand Duchess, who was brutally murdered with her family in 1918.

(My questions are in italics)

The Diary of Olga Romanov is clearly
a wonderful primary source, providing insight into the events surrounding the
Imperial Family and the Russian Revolution. Does it create a different
impression of the Imperial Family than the one which is usually presented?

The format of my book is deliberately a
full-circle type of story, which begins with the discovery of the family’s
remains in Koptyaki forest, then goes back in time to find out how events unfolded
which led up to that eventuality, And this story of course is told through the
words of Olga herself, as well as those close to her.

The reader will get a very intimate insight
about Olga’s and her family’s daily life during the war years, then during the start
of the revolution and later in their exile. With the hindsight 20/20 knowledge
of the family’s ultimate fate, the experience of reading this book will be somewhat
similar to that of Anne Frank’s diaries, but with the additional perspectives
of those involved in the heroine’s story.

Because of the brutality of their
murder, the daughters of the Tsar are often presented as a group of innocent
young girls, children even, who are barely distinguishable from one another.
Does the diary bring out Olga’s individuality and reveal a great deal more about
her character?

During the course of several
years that I worked on the translations of these diaries, I felt that I
personally went from perceiving Olga Nikolaevna Romanov as just a footnote, as
she often appears in history books or biographies, to a real flesh and blood
human being who actually lived in the not-so-long-ago 20th
century.

Despite the fact that for the
most part Olga mundanely recorded her daily activities in her diaries - with
not an overwhelming amount of emotions or personal feelings –there are many
subtle glimpses into her personality and intimate thoughts, which offer the
reader a lot of insight.

While translating, I learned to
read "between the lines" and started to see the teenager and the
young woman who was not so different from girls I know personally – from her
school girl crushes to her hopes and fears.

From her diaries I also learned
that despite what has often been said about the imperial children, they did
have a lot of casual, as well as close, friendships and a rather busy social
life. In Olga's case at least, some of these people even seemed to be intimate
friends of the opposite sex, although these relationships were clearly chaste,
albeit flirtatious.

Although we should not judge
the person Olga was based solely on her diaries, we do get a lot of information
as to what her daily life was like, how she socialized, what kinds of things
she liked and disliked, what committees she was involved in, what books she read,
what she felt about her parents, siblings and friends. Very often, Olga did use
“we”, “we 2”, “we 3” and “we 4”, because the sisters did do a lot of activities
together and were generally very close.

I want to add that often, the
post-teenaged Olga’s diary entries sounded to me like a much younger girl’s,
which would cause me to do a double-take and once again mentally calculate her
age at the time she wrote these lines. However, I am convinced that this was
probably just an attempt at consistency for contemporary diary writing. In this
sense, Olga’s letters to friends and relatives during the same time are much
more age appropriate, and emotional.

A strange thing that happened
during my work on the diaries was that although I had long been very familiar
with the history of what happened to Olga and her family, I would still catch
myself thinking "I can't believe they actually killed this girl.” I
started to feel almost as if this murdered person was someone I knew
personally. It was a very strange feeling about someone I never met, someone I
only knew through her diaries. This is how powerful these pages proved to be.

She obviously wasn’t a child, since
she was 22 years old at the time of her death and had lived through the horrors
of war and revolution. Does the diary paint a vivid picture of her work with
the wounded and the effects of war on her family?

Yes,
absolutely. Almost every single entry contains some description of her work at
the infirmary, including detailed descriptions of the patients’ conditions, how
they were treated, etc. Of course I did not include all of that in the book,
but the reader will definitely get the idea of what a huge part of her life the
infirmary and its patients were for several years. One can say that it was
basically her entire life for almost three years, between mid-1914 until early
1917.

How does Olga deal with the
revolution and her father’s abdication?

Olga stops writing in her diary abruptly in March,
1918, with no explanation whatsoever. This was around the time her father
abdicated. Towards the end she writes scattered entries, including about her
illness (measles) but never mentions her father’s abdication or any of the
other important political events going on around her. I think that her omission
is deliberate and tells us as much about her feelings as if she had actually
written about it. We learn of Olga’s further life through her father’s diaries
and other people’s memoirs, which also gives us as much insight as if she
continued writing herself. The points of view of those close to her give us yet
another perspective on Olga as a person.

Many myths and a good deal of
speculation surround the ‘healer’, Rasputin and his role in the downfall of the
Russian monarchy. What was Olga’s attitude towards him?

Olga mentions Rasputin in her diaries only
occasionally, and it doesn’t appear that he was a huge part of their lives. When she does talk about him, it is always in
sincerely affectionate terms. Olga seemed genuinely devastated when Rasputin
was missing and later turned out to have been murdered at the end of 1916, and
it was clearly not just out of sympathy for her mother or brother, but from her
own obvious fondness of him.

One thing I learned from her diaries was that
neither Olga nor the members of her circle called Rasputin “Father Gregori” or
some other term evidently imagined in popular books and media. In her diaries
she always referred to him by his first name and patronymic, Gregori
Yefimovich, or even simply Grigori.

Many people believe that character
is revealed through handwriting. Did anything particular strike you about
Olga’s handwriting or her writing style?

To be honest at first the only thing
I noticed that although very elegant, Olga’s handwriting was very difficult to
read. I almost gave up right there and then, but fortunately ended up persevering.

One of the most obvious things
that struck me was that Olga would occasionally write in some sort of a code,
which at first I mistook for another language, perhaps Armenian, but which
turned out to be something she probably made up. Most likely they were thoughts
she wanted to keep private, but you can imagine how curious that made me! At
this point I don’t think we will ever be able to crack this code and what she
wrote using it will be lost in annals of history.

I am convinced that having worked
from the actual photocopies of the diary pages as opposed to the printed
version did give me a lot more insight to Olga’s state of mind. When her handwriting
became sloppier I could tell that she was upset or frustrated, she would also cross
words out more often, or make mistakes, with dates for example. This was not
something that was obvious to me immediately but took some time to see.

In my translations, I tried to
stay as close as possible to Olga’s style and the “feel” of her original
writings – such as her manner of expression and even her use of capital
lettering, abbreviations, etc., which is the reason why occasionally the text
may sound a little awkwardor appear
inconsistent.

The translation of these
diaries and the ultimate book project based on them was my first major effort
of such length, and shortly after I started this project I realized that it was
a lot more time consuming than I initially imagined. But as my brain got used
to Olga’s handwriting and I was able to decipher it a little faster, things got
more efficient and consequently less frustrating. As I completed each entry I
felt a small sense of accomplishment and after a while I even started to have a
peculiar (albeit delusional) feeling of propriety/possessiveness about Olga, as
if I now knew this girl better than anyone else.

Once in a while I would even unexpectedly
experience strange episodes of sadness (due to hind sight 20/20 of course)
being aware of what Olga’s future held for her - the impending events she was
not conscious of while writing the lines I was now looking at.

What do you think your readers will
gain from reading this book?

Besides the diaries themselves,
the additional material this book contains will give the reader a better and
more objective understanding of what was actually happening in the imperial
family’s lives at the time. I think that
the reader will wind up with a much better sense of who the eldest daughter of
the last Tsar of Russia (as well the members of her family), was as a human
being, as well as of the historical events that surrounded her at the time she
wrote down her words.

Are you now working on a new book or
do you have any plans for future projects related to the Romanovs or other
royalties of the era?

At
this time I do not a have a concrete plan for my next project, but I do have a
couple of ideas, which will most likely involve translations of other primary
material never published in English. The Russian archives contain an enormous
amount of these treasures. I will keep everyone updated on my Facebook page.

Thank you very much, Helen. I look forward to reading the book as soon as it is available.The book, published by Pen & Sword in the UK, and Westholme in the USA, is available for pre-order via Amazon now.